Carmontelle's landmark publication, Garden at Monceau, beautifully reproduced to show the Parisian garden's artistic and cultural importance before the French Revolution. Originally published in 1779, Garden at Monceau is a richly illustrated presentation of the garden Louis Carrogis, known as Carmontelle, designed on the eve of the French Revolution for Louis-Philippe-Joseph d'Orleans, duc de Chartres. With its array of architectural follies intended to surprise and amaze the visitor, the garden was a setting for ancien regime social life. Carmontelle's portrayal of his work in Garden at Monceau therefore serves as an expression of a key moment in the history of European landscape design, garden architecture, and social history. This facsimile edition, with its English-language text and reproductions of the original engravings, is accompanied by essays that interpret the landscape design and examine Carmontelle's larger career as a painter and theater producer.

A "Washington Post Book World" Best Book of the Year
When her carriage first crossed over from her native Austria into France, fourteen-year-old Marie Antoinette was taken out, stripped naked before an entourage, and dressed in French attire to please the court of her new king. For a short while, the young girl played the part.
But by the time she took the throne, everything had changed. In "Queen of Fashion, " Caroline Weber tells of the radical restyling that transformed the young queen into an icon and shaped the future of the nation. With her riding gear, her white furs, her pouf hairstyles, and her intricate ballroom disguises, Marie Antoinette came to embody--gloriously and tragically--all the extravagance of the monarchy.

A passion for luxury and beauty propels the multifaceted work of acclaimed international architect and interior designer Robert Couturier. Robert Couturier's aesthetic is a dialogue between Old World elegance and contemporary design. His masterful approach effortlessly brings eras together, for example a Louis XVI commode with a 1960s lamp. Couturier's name has become synonymous with continental and international style, and he is known for composing adventurous rooms that have a witty flair. All his interiors extol the importance of how a home should stimulate the five senses, from the tactile feel of upholstery to the visual presentation of objects that leads a person through a space. The book opens with a tour of Couturier's country retreat in bucolic Kent, Connecticut. Composed of neoclassical-style pavilions, early American guesthouses, and beautiful gardens, the house features imaginative rooms that are filled with his collections of European art, furniture, and decorative objects. A selection of the designer's other projects--from smart contemporary apartments to romantic Mexican villas to a stately English manor--provides further inspiration.